>The officer, Jeronimo Yanez, had been charged with second-degree manslaughter and endangering safety by discharging a firearm in the shooting of Philando Castile.

>After the verdict, jurors and Mr. Yanez were quickly led out of the courtroom, and Mr. Castile’s family left immediately. When a deputy tried to stop his mother, Valerie, she yelled “Let me go.”

>Later, she said: “My son loved this city, and this city killed my son. And a murderer gets away. Are you kidding me right now?”

>She continued: “The system in this country continues to fail black people and will continue to fail us.”

>A handful of protesters gathered outside the Ramsey County courthouse. “It’s not us that were on trial, it was the system that was on trial,” Mel Reeves, a community activist, said. “Yanez worked for the system. He killed somebody, right. Philando Castile got victimized by the system.”

>The verdict, which came on the fifth day of deliberations, followed the acquittal last month of an Oklahoma police officer who killed an unarmed black man and, of particular interest here, a prosecutor’s decision last year not to charge the Minneapolis officers who killed another black man, Jamar Clark.

>Mr. Castile’s death on July 6, 2016, became international news almost immediately because his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was sitting in the front seat, streamed the aftermath live on Facebook.

>From that moment, the case hinged largely on conflicting accounts of what Mr. Castile was doing before he was shot. Officer Yanez claimed in the Facebook video, and again last week on the witness stand, that he believed Mr. Castile was grabbing a gun. Ms. Reynolds said in the video, and testified in court, that Mr. Castile had been trying to cooperate and produce his driver’s license.

>The killing led to weeks of protests here, including an encampment outside the Minnesota governor’s mansion, and renewed questions about how officers use force and treat black people.

>Prosecutors said Officer Yanez had created a dangerous situation, perceived a threat where none existed and, in addition to killing Mr. Castile, almost wounded Ms. Reynolds and her young daughter in the back seat.

>“He was making assumptions and jumping to conclusions without engaging in the dialogue he was trained to have in a citizen encounter like this,” Jeffrey Paulsen, a prosecutor, said in closing arguments on Monday. “And that’s his fault, not the fault of Philando Castile.”

>Mr. Castile was licensed to carry a gun and was recorded on a dashboard camera video calmly telling Officer Yanez that he had a weapon in the car. Officer Yanez told him not to reach for the weapon, and Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds both tried to assure the officer that he was not doing so. Within seconds, Officer Yanez fired seven shots. Prosecutors said Mr. Castile had mentioned his gun to allay concerns, not to threaten the officer or escalate the situation.

>“If someone were just about to reach in their pocket and pull out a gun and shoot an officer, that’s the last thing they would say,” Mr. Paulsen said.

blacks have no more right to immunity from official injustice than anyone else.
in 1992 the state of arizona stole $249 from me. i ain't black, but i deserve to get my money back as much as that cop deserves a conviction & neither are going to ever happen because the prisoners don't run the jail, the people with the keys do.

>“Uh but uh as that was happening as he was pulling at, out his hand I thought, I was gonna die and I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five year old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me?”

Reading these WaPo comments are... interesting. They are being forced to choose between siding with the black guy and siding against the gun owner, both choices being their natural inclination. It seems to be going half and half. A lot of people criticizing the NRA for remaining silent, but I see Colion has put his two cents in after all.

>The family of Philando Castile, who was shot and killed last year by a St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer, has reached a $3 million settlement with the city, according to a statement from the city and lawyers for the family.

>Jeronimo Yanez, who is leaving the force, was acquitted June 16 of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of intentional discharge of a firearm that endangers safety. Castile was killed July 6 during a traffic stop, and his girlfriend streamed the shooting's aftermath on Facebook Live.

>>116961>The Minnesota Policeman's Union has issued a statement that the officers feared for their lives because they "saw her wide nose and knew she was hopped up on an unstoppable mix of crystal geodes and patchouli incense, and could only be stopped with lethal force."

>>116965>>116966Listen here you faggot thug lovers. Our Boys in Blue are basically servicemembers, fighting the War on Crime every day on the homefront. A civilian like you would never understand what an officer of the law puts on the line every day.

>He described went down on Saturday, both before and after the shooting.

>“As they reached [the alley behind Damond’s home], Officer Harrity indicated that he was startled by a loud sound near the squad,” investigators said in a press release. “Immediately afterward [Damond] approached the driver’s side window of the squad. Harrity indicated that Officer Noor discharged his weapon, striking [Damond] through the open driver’s side window.

>The suspect whom police officer Stephen Mader confronted was visibly distraught, and his hands were behind his back.
>Following orders from Mader, the man showed his hands, revealing a handgun. The officer ordered him to drop the weapon.
>“I can’t do that,” the man said, according to court documents. “Just shoot me.”
>“Just shoot me,” he said a few more times.
>Mader, who is white, didn’t, thinking deadly force was not necessary. He believed that the man, Ronald J. Williams, who is black, was a threat to himself but not to others.
>Another officer shot and killed Williams, but Mader’s decision to not shoot would cost him his job as a police officer for the city of Weirton, W.Va., according to allegations in a federal lawsuit he filed last week against his former employer.
...
>Mader’s firing surprised civil rights advocates.
>Joseph Cohen, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in West Virginia, said Mader did not just see a black man with a gun when he confronted Williams.
>“He was able to look at the full situation, the body language, words that used, and determined that Mr. Williams was not a threat to other people,” Cohen said. “We were flabbergasted. Here was a police officer who did everything that we want police officers to do.”
...
>O’Brien also pointed to Mader’s previous experience in the military, having completed a tour in Afghanistan as part of the U.S. Marine Corps.
>“Mr. Mader was trained to assess the threat level posed by individuals he encountered, including taking into account an individual’s demeanor, physical appearance, and actions,” the complaint said.

Fact of the matter is, a lot of cops are trained and expected to shoot first and ask questions later. We shouldn't necessarily hold it against individual officers that they would then do so. The training and overarching culture needs to change.

And honestly, soldiers are given better training than cops on identifying who is and is not a threat? Which group is bound to face more threats?

>>116996>At that point, Williams waved the unloaded gun, and one of the two officers fatally shot him.

This is the statement I was looking for. Once that gun came up, they needed to shoot him. Very sad, but that's where the line is. Even at that point, it still could've been avoided had it not been for a tragic error. If anyone needs to be fired, it's the dispatcher:
>The woman called 911 again and told the dispatcher that Williams had a gun but that it was not loaded. But Mader did not know that when he arrived at the scene because that information was not radioed over to him or to the two other officers who arrived later, O’Brien said.

“When a student couldn’t pay for their lunch, a lot of times (Castile) actually paid for their lunch out of his own pocket,” Stacy Koppen, nutritional services director for St. Paul Public Schools, told the CBS News affiliate.

>The city of St. Louis was bracing for protests Friday, hours after a judge found a white police officer not guilty of the fatal 2011 shooting of a black man despite evidence showing the officer's DNA on a gun he allegedly planted after the shooting.

>In his ruling, Judge Timothy Wilson said state prosecutors had "failed" to prove the case against the officer, Jason Stockley, who had been facing a first-degree murder charge for killing Anthony Lamar Smith, 24, inside his car after a chase.

>“I’m disappointed with the court’s finding," said Kim Gardner, a local judge whose office investigates all police-involved shootings in the city of St. Louis. “I know there are better ways we can do this if we join together to make the system work for us all.”